Jay Kristoff

Jay Kristoff

Jay Kristoff

Jay Kristoff

Jay Kristoff

Latest Blog Articles

Memories can play tricks on us, fading and twisting over time and sometimes even changing altogether. How, then, can they form the basis of a magic system? That was the question I faced in developing The Machinery Trilogy. Without giving too much away, memories sit at the heart of the magic in the novels: they live forever, and are imbued with the power of an ancient god. Memories hold a number of interesting possibilities for a magic system. For a start, they are fascinating in their trickiness. I am often surprised to find that something I was sure occurred in one place actually took place in another, or in a different year than I expected, for example. Sometimes it seems that two or more memories have somehow mixed together, like paints on a palette. This presents interesting possibilities for a magic system, where each memory holds its own power, and can be combined with the power of another memory – in just the same way that real memories become tangled up over time. There is also the question of potency. It is undoubtedly true that certain memories hold a power over us, for whatever reason, good or bad. This provides... Read more »

From the very beginning, The Wolves of Llisé has been about truth. On my website, www.amongwolves.net there is a quotation by Mark Twain that I love: “The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.” It’s an old refrain but most would agree that history is written by the victors; the losers receive much less press coverage, even in America. In Llisé, the Archives in Coreé contain the official written version of history and, yet, another version exists, no less precise and carefully guarded, in the form of the oral Provincial Chronicles. The differences between the two are blatant. The Archives intentionally cover up decades of cruelty and hate. They consistently present the provincial people as the enemy and the government as the beleaguered guardians of the empire. It’s odd isn’t it that here in the 21st century, we find ourselves wrestling with the same issues that haunt the history of Llisé? Conspiracies, deception, and lies fill the evening news. History is being written and rewritten and for most people the truth is a well-hidden, carefully guarded secret. Where can any of us go to find the truth and, once we find it, what should we do to... Read more »

Clones have long held a fascination for storytellers. Before cloning was a scientific reality, there were many myths and fables about evil twins, doppelgängers, and the creation of humans “from scratch.” Copies, supernatural reflections, and Frankenstein’s monster all come from the same long-standing questions and fears: what makes us ‘us’? And can that be taken away? A clone is a genetic twin of the source. But what does that mean? Twins do not have exactly the same experiences, and thus do not share the same memories. They are unquestionably individuals, with their own wants and needs and desires. We’ve all encountered stories of clones created through replicators, where a person is copied right down to their current memories and the clothes on their back–but this type of clone is very different from both the ones I’ve created in Noumenon, and those created by modern science. Dolly the sheep was not a carbon copy of its parent. Using an adult’s DNA to create a baby does not mean you end up with a person who thinks and acts exactly like their original once they’ve grown. In Noumenon, I explore the concept of clones as a ‘fix.’ Early in the novel, clones... Read more »

When I came to write The Court of Broken Knives, it was the world that came first, not the story. The story, in fact, is pretty simple, in the way that myths and folk tales often are. The first scene I wrote was a description of men in a desert, and violence, and they were travelling towards a great city, and that city was every fantasy city I have ever loved. Why they were travelling, what the purpose of this journey was and what would happen to them when they got there, was at first unimportant. But the joy of writing the desert … Of writing the city … Of writing a world … In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan The wonder of it. Marvels. Magic. Beauty. The dream of things so far beyond mundane reach. To enter a world that is not our own. Of course I enjoy the plot twists, the characters, the action. But it’s the evocation of other worlds that love most about fantasy as a genre. I want to... Read more »